The issue is even more personal for some conference attendees – parents and siblings of youths who have killed themselves in recent years in the wake of repeated bullying.

Sirdeaner Walker, for instance, became a national advocate for anti-bullying laws and education after her 11-year-old son, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, committed suicide in 2009 after prolonged anti-gay bullying at school. Attention to his case, as well as the suicide last year of teenager Phoebe Prince, helped build momentum for a new comprehensive bullying prevention law in Massachusetts.

“No family should have to go through what these families have gone through,” President Obama said. With a third of all middle-schoolers and high-schoolers reporting that they have been bullied in a given school year, he said, “we’ve got to make sure our young people know that if they’re in trouble, there are caring adults who can help.... And this is a responsibility we all share – a responsibility we have to teach all children the Golden Rule: We should treat others the way we want to be treated.”